19 most dramatic and over-the-top Disney villains

Captain Hook — Peter Pan

Was Captain James Hook always destined to lose his hand because of his name, or was it a spooky coincidence?

Either way, Captain Hook is on this list of dramatic villains not for his hook hand. In many ways, he’d be allowed to be dramatic about that, since Peter Pan fed his actual hand to a crocodile that now pursues him hungrily in want of more pirate flesh. If you can’t be furious about that, what can you be furious about?

No, Captain Hook is on this list because he kills a member of his own crew just for singing happily in his presence.

Don’t let the pale pink shirt fool you. There’s as much flair in this man’s temper as there is in his foppish wardrobe. He flips tables at the drop of a hat, smokes two cigars at once even when he’s happy, and has a feather in his hat so lush that it can only be compensating for something.

Unlike many of the other villains here though, there’s one thing he lacks: pride. Although his constant defeat at the hands of Peter Pan infuriates him, it takes him all of two seconds to surrender and admit aloud that he is indeed a renowned codfish when pressed.

He wails — often.

If Hook suffers, he does not suffer in silence. It’s quite the opposite. When struck down by a cold, he sits mumbling about that “cursed Peter Pan,” shivering pathetically with a hot water bottle on his head and his feet soaking in the Neverland version of a foot spa. His sneezes are improbably loud, to the point where we can only assume it’s just one big cry for attention.

Captain Hook is a mercurial villain, that’s for sure. With more reason than most for theatrics, he still manages to be over-the-top, and that is almost commendable.

Not bad for a codfish.